BLAINE WASHINGTON SNAPSHOT

Civil Rights Controversy

Conflict between open government activists and City of Blaine officials led to Mayor Mary Lou Steward's February 12, 2024 cancellation of the longstanding oral public comment period at city council meetings, followed by a Free Speech protest on April 8, 2024 at Blaine City Hall. 

Election interference by Blaine City Manager Mike Harmon on June 23, 2025, and election interference on September 8, 2025 by Mayor Mary Lou Steward, was followed by the Public Records Act controversy on September 10, 2025, as open government activists sought documents concealed by the city that they needed for a State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) appeal of the Avista at Birch Point planned unit development.

On October 13, 2025, death threats by David Brudvik--a convicted violent felon--against open government activists for opposing Mayor Steward and City Manager Harmon resulted in the November 4, 2025 civil protection orders, signed by Whatcom District Court Judge Angela Anderson. Brudvik was ordered to surrender two dozen firearms as well.

On March 9, 2026, Blaine City Council suspended Central Business District zoning, gifting all on-street public parking to downtown developers, including Councilwoman Sarbjit Bains, who neglected to recuse herself as state law requires. A formal complaint to the Whatcom County Prosecutor and request for Attorney General referral was dismissed without reason.

On March 23, 2026, the City of Blaine held a police support rally in the middle of a Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission (CJTC) civil rights investigation of Blaine Police Department, begun on March 6, 2026, after open government activists filed certification complaints against Blaine Chief of Police Rodger Funk with the CJTC in January 2026.

On May 11, 2026, Blaine City Council approved the Creekside planned unit development over Blaine's municipal aquifer, despite the May 7, 2026 ruling by Washington State's Chief Health Law Judge to investigate Creekside's potential contamination of Blaine's public water system.

Conflict with Lummi Nation

As Washington State Poet Laureate and enrolled member of Lummi Nation, Rena Priest wrote in her September 17, 2020 article Reciprocity and the Age of Extinction,

"In 1880, John Waller and the Alaska Packers Association destroyed a Lummi fishing village that had been in use for millennia. They forced the fishers to leave using threats of violence…

The village was a source of social and cultural exchange, as well as a place to harvest sustenance in accordance with a contract of reciprocity with the natural world… Nets were woven with willow bark and people harvested in a manner that involved no bycatch or destruction to surrounding landscapes or waterways. The Alaska Packers Association saw an opportunity to partake in this bounty, and rather than honor the laws of reciprocity, they displaced the Indigenous fishers and usurped their village site to be used as the new location for a canning facility."

This was the beginning of Blaine.*

In 2017, Lummi Nation accepted $3.5 million from the City of Blaine and title to two acres on the Semiahmoo Spit—where, in 1999, the City of Blaine intentionally desecrated a Lummi burial ground, digging up over 100 human remains and offering tons of dirt filled with ancient cultural artifacts as “free fill.”

*See July 1, 2025 article Requiem for Semiahmoo at the Center for World Indigenous Studies.